Baby P: a child born into misery who never knew a normal life

When Tracey Connelly gave birth to Baby Peter in March 2006, she was delighted
with the latest addition to her growing family.

Baby Peter suffered more that 50 injuries in his short life, including a broken back, eight fractured ribs and 15 mouth woundsPhoto: PA

By Caroline Gammell

6:00AM BST 11 Aug 2009

The bright little boy was taken back to live in her council house in an ordinary suburban north London street. But behind the front door of the home at Penshurst Road, her little boy was subjected to the sort of violent abuse that would be beyond the comprehension of even some of the hardened criminals with whom Connelly is sharing a prison.

The fact that it was meted out by her lover, while she casually surfed internet pornography sites, watched television or flicked through adult magazines, makes it all the more difficult to understand.

Even the experienced police officers who discovered Peter’s battered body in his blood-stained cot were appalled by what they encountered. In the house they found human faeces, dog faeces, and dead rats and chickens to feed the two pet snakes kept by Steven Barker, Connelly’s violent boyfriend.

On the kitchen surface was a dismembered rabbit. The place was infested with fleas and stank of urine. Despite the almost Dickensian scenes of squalor a succession of doctors, health visitors and social workers missed 78 opportunities to save Peter.

At the beginning it seemed so different. Connelly, who already had three children, described Peter on an internet social networking website as the “coolest person I met”. That feeling was not to last.

Within days Peter was nothing more than an irritation to Connelly. She could not be bothered to bathe, feed or love her baby boy. He was usually left screaming for food in a soiled nappy while she indulged her obsession with the internet, in a life bankrolled by £450 a month in benefits.

Connelly knew exactly how to exploit the system to ensure she had internet access and the latest television. She had never held down a job. Lodgers came and went yet no one in officialdom noticed. By the time Peter was three months old, Connelly had had affairs with two other men. One was Barker, an illiterate part-time handyman. When he moved into her north London home in November, she made sure nobody knew he was there so she could continue to milk the benefits system. They smoked, drank heavily, favouring cans of Budweiser or shots of vodka, as their house degenerated into a slum.

Even though she was incapable of looking after a child, Connelly acquired two puppies whose faeces intermingled with human ones and became trodden into the urine-soaked carpets.

Until that point, Peter had been neglected and suffered the odd scratch and bruise. Naturally, he craved attention. Tragically he was to receive the wrong sort from his new stepfather, whom he was slowly learning to call “dad”.

Having tortured animals in his youth, Nazi-obsessed Barker relished Peter’s helplessness at nine months. Treating him no better than a dog, Barker forced him to sit on the floor with his head between his legs for up to half an hour until he clicked his fingers.

If the child moved, he was punched. If he fell, he was kicked. If he whimpered, he was slapped. Connelly failed to stop it.

In December 2006, Peter’s injuries were serious enough for the police to arrest his mother. Yet Connelly, who had deceived the authorities over her benefits, then used her cunning to convince the police falsely that her own mother, who had often stayed over, was to blame.

He was taken to the home of Angela Foster, a friend of Connelly’s, and placed on the child protection register. As the weeks passed, his wounds started to heal. Although two police officers protested, social services decided that the boy should return to his mother.

What tiny emotional bond Connelly had formed with her son had vanished by the time he came home in January 2007. Connelly complained that he always “wanted picking up and cuddles all the time”. Much like any baby of the same age.

A month later, she and the children — and, secretly, Barker — were rehoused in the four-bedroom house in Penshurst Road and the abuse started again. Maria Ward, a new social worker assigned to Connelly, noted how Peter butted the floor, obviously distressed. Neighbours spotted the toddler scratching around in the dirt in the garden desperately trying to find something to eat.

Connelly, aware that she was being monitored by social services, continued to protect Barker. Peter fell into the fireplace or tripped and banged his head because he was “clumsy”, she would say.

By spring 2007, the couple’s relationship had started to disintegrate and the idle Barker — determined to “toughen up” the toddler — became ever more violent. When he got bored, he would place Peter carefully on a revolving stool and spin him around as hard as he could, laughing when the child was sent crashing to the ground or flying into a piece of furniture.

Ann Walker, a childminder paid by the council to look after Peter to give Connelly “a break”, recalled: “He came to me always very dirty and smelly. His fingers were black and nails were broken. You could see he was a child who was neglected. He had the most sad eyes.”

She claimed that she reported her findings to Miss Ward, but nothing was done.

In June 2007, Connelly was arrested and bailed for a second time as doctors spotted more injuries on Peter’s body, but he was still allowed home as she convinced the authorities her son was responsible for his own terrible injuries.

The same month, the household of two adults, four children and three dogs, received six more secret additions. Jason Owen, Barker’s brother, moved in with his 15-year-old runaway girlfriend. His four children from his previous marriage would also stay occasionally, meaning up to 12 people lived in the four-bedroom house at any one time.

Owen, a member of the National Front, joined in the habitual shoving, kicking and pushing of Peter, as the child was used as a “punching bag”. In the days before he died, the toddler’s spine was snapped like a “hinge” by one of his tormentors. It has never been proved who was to blame.

Paralysed from the waist down, Peter was left in his pushchair as chocolate spread was used to cover up the bruises on his face, and nappy cream to conceal the lesions on his head.

Miss Ward visited but noticed nothing amiss. When the boy was taken to Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat at the local hospital two days before he died, she failed to examine him properly because he was “cranky”.

He was not cranky. He was in excruciating pain.

The next day Connelly was told by the Crown Prosecution Service that she would not face charges over her two arrests due to insufficient evidence. Within hours, the toddler was punched so hard in the mouth that he swallowed one of his bottom teeth.

After 17 months, Peter’s struggle to survive had come to an end and the following morning, on Aug 3, 2007, he was found dead in his blood-spattered cot. When his lifeless body was discovered, his tormentors realised how much trouble they might be in.

Owen helped Barker get rid of incriminating bloodstained bed sheets and went with him to dump a bloodstained Babygro in a canal, before fleeing with his girlfriend. A few hours later, Connelly rang for an ambulance, but still made them wait before taking her son to the hospital so she could fetch her cigarettes.

Doctors discovered that in addition to his snapped spine, he had eight broken ribs, a neck injury from the force of the punch, a severed fingertip, and missing fingernails and toenails.

When police searched the house they failed to find a single piece of his clothing that was not covered in blood.